DOCTOR WALL STREET: How the American Health Care System Got So Sick

Normally the GLS Blog writes about issues that have a global dimension. But GLS staff regularly work on national and local issues as well.  We wanted to give our readers a window into some of this work, so below is a newly released pamphlet, entitled DOCTOR WALL STREET: How the American Health Care System Got So Sick, prepared by GLS staff member Jeremy Brecher and first published in Z Magazine.  An abstract and the pamphlet's introduction are below. Download the full pamphlet here.

ABSTRACT: DOCTOR WALL STREET: How the American Health Care System Got So Sick

Few people know the real truth about how the American healthcare system came to be the way it is.  They know the system has a lot of problems, but they feel it must be the way it is for good reasons.  They are wary of reform because they fear attempts to fix the system might put what they already have in jeopardy.  DOCTOR WALL STREET: How the American Health Care System Got So Sick is a short (3200 word) easy-to-read pamphlet providing a unique historical account, based on recent scholarship, of how the American healthcare system got the way it is.  It’s a story of private interests – ranging from colonial era physicians to today’s drug corporations and private hospital chains – who shaped the system to serve their own greed and self-interest, not just patients’ health. But it also shows that, when people have spoken up forcefully, they have forced the system to provide healthcare to wider and wider circles of Americans.  This pamphlet provides knowledge that will arm Americans in their contemporary struggle to provide good healthcare to all.